


Alone No More

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Angst, Battle Scenes, Daedra, Daedric Princes, Dark Anchor, Dark Magic, Dissociation, Emotionally Repressed, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fighter's Guild (Elder Scrolls), Hurt/Comfort, Internal Conflict, Magic, Magic-Users, Valenwood, Vampire Hunters, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-14 18:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: While hunting vampires in the jungle of Valenwood, Mel Adrys comes across a mysterious Altmer woman, who stirs within him a mixture of infatuation and dread. For she is a vampire, and he is sworn to destroy her kind. And yet he cannot deny that she is not quite like the monsters he dealt with before... Could what he was taught have been wrong? Could there really be such a thing as a 'good vampire'?





	1. Chapter 1

Since leaving Longhaven, he had walked without taking a single look back, his heavy boots hammering a steady, pounding rhythm into the green-tinted mud underfoot; each step of his ceaseless march, not once broken by a pause to catch a breath, was so ferocious that one could have thought that the winding jungle path had personally wronged him somehow, and he was now getting back at it with violent stomping. He did not slow down even when tiny droplets of water started bouncing off his pauldrons, and the lush greenery overhead started gradually getting obscured by the grey veil of a drizzle. On and on he walked, his gait still as rapid, ignoring the uncomfortable clammy touch of the powdery sprinkle against his face and in the gaps between his armour pieces. He would have kept trudging through the wet haze, focusing on the blurry outlines of the path until his neck began to hurt for lack of turning his head - but, as it often happens in Valenwood, the drizzle suddenly decided to grow into a torrential downpour, turning the forest air in an enormous, billowing, waterfall-like curtain of water. A force of nature like this is enough to deter even the most stoic wanderer, and, spluttering and grumbling to himself, the lone Dunmer marching through the jungle eventually had to veer off the path (which had, in a matter of moments, turned into an ankle-deep river of glistening muck) and seek shelter underneath the roots of a mighty graht oak.  
  
This old tree, one of the many that shape the wild landscape in the land of the Bosmer, is so massive that its interweaving root system rises above ground like crisscrossing greenish-brown bridges, forming a sort of makeshift dome over a patch of leaf-strewn ground, and keeping the carpet of foliage completely dry, shielded from the watery lashes of the rainstorm. It is here that the Dunmer is sitting now, having taken off his armour, which came uncomfortably close to turning into an assortment of boot-, gauntlet-, and cuirass-shaped water buckets. This leaves him in nothing but a thin linen undershirt - but while the veil of water beyond his shelter is still rippling, the air in the forest is warm, slightly stuffy even, so he does not have to worry about freezing, as he would have had to in other lands he has visited, like the birch forests of the Rift in Skyrim, where the mornings are clear and nippy, and the ground crackles underfoot, being covered by a thin crust of rime.  
  
No, in Valenwood, he does not mind being exposed to the elements. Doing without the protection of his gear, however, is another matter completely - and thus he keeps his trusty flame-enthused blade close by his side, with his fingers reaching for it searchingly every few seconds, twitching over the hilt and then relaxing, briefly, at the contact with the tingling enchanted metal... only to grope around and check if the sword is still there a moment later. This happens purely by reflex, while the blade owner's mind is occupied by something entirely different.  
  
He is praying, in a low but still fervent voice, with the same obstinacy as when he was walking down the now flooded path, falling into a steady drumming rhythm in time with the patter of the rain against the roots above his head - a rhythm that he does not break, starting a new sacred chant the instant he comes to the end of the one before, and going full circle to begin anew when he runs out of the prayers he knows.   
  
He appeals to a whole succession of gods and saints, sometimes even ones whose domains clash: from his patron Veloth to the Almsivi Tribunal, the three 'Good Daedra' of the Ashlands, a couple of other Daedra (Meridia, mostly), a few ancestor spirits, and even some human deities, like Arkay and Stendarr. It does not really matter to him which of them heeds his prayers first; he just needs to be heard. To be shielded. To be cleansed. To be returned back to... normal.  
  
Just as he left behind the jungle road, so has he strayed off the righteous path that he has been following for most of his life. And it frightens him. He, Mel Adrys, a veteran vampire hunter, who has slain countless creatures of the night, who has faced the most eldritch horrors that dwell in the twisted hearts of wild forests and in the dark bowels of the earth, and never even flinched - he is now feeling an overpowering helplessness encroaching upon him, stirring somewhere in the pit of his stomach and then rising up to grip his heart. His trek through the jungle, when he ordered himself not to think of anything but the road ahead, and now his prayers have helped him fight the crippling sensation back - but it is not gone. Not entirely. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot move past what happened; he cannot forget what he said and felt; he cannot return to his usual state of mind, preoccupied by nothing but his noble mission. He cannot pretend that things are back to the way they should be. Because they are not - and deep down, he fears that they never will be.  
  
Gods forgive him... He has been touched by the very taint he has been fighting so relentlessly against. He let down his guard, and made a mistake that is now making him doubt his own worth as a vanquisher of evil. He allied himself with a vampire.  
  
He should have seen her... it... for what it was, the moment that creature approached him. They first met at his campsite in the moors on the outskirts of Longhaven, just as he was preparing to set out on his quest to eradicate a whole nest of bloodsuckers that were preying on the local Bosmeri hunters, using unholy magic to infect the mist over the wetlands with sickly fumes that enthralled all who inhaled them, turning the victims into obedient sleepwalking husks that trudged into the vampires' lair of their own accord.  
  
Mel, too, found himself struggling with the heady influence of the mist, which would have lulled his senses if he did not turn every waking moment into an excruciating exercise of willpower. He remembers feeling proud of himself, as he knelt in prayer amid the slithering, treacherous white wisps, managing to silence the hissing chorus of beckoning voices that the accursed haze awoke at the back of his head. He thought himself strong, unbreakable - but now it appears that he was wrong. Otherwise he would have been more suspicious of the stranger that appeared suddenly in front of him, a tall pale figure weaving itself out of the mist, and offered assistance. He would have known who... what it really was. He would have known. He should have known.  
  
He should have guessed the creature's nature by appearance alone. True, some vampires may be almost undistinguishable from mortal folk, especially if they recently quenched their unnatural thirst, or are using advanced Illusion magic to blend in - but he is experienced enough to have sensed that there was something wrong about that slender, soft-spoken Altmeri woman; about her smooth skin, which barely had the golden tint typical of her kind; about her eyes, with their reddish-copper hue, not quite vampiric, but not quite meric, either; about the cold touch of her fingertips as she extended her hand in an open, friendly gesture... But what was he focused on instead? On her smile, of all things!  
  
It appeared on her lips the moment she greeted him with a tentative 'Hello', and kept growing broader and more radiant as she spoke of how one of the villagers had sent her to him, describing him as 'one who knew his purpose'. Lacking the telltale sharp fangs (also the result of a powerful illusion, he'd wager), that smile of hers seemed so sincere and gentle that Mel was slightly taken aback, not quite used to dealing with people that did not snarl and bare their weapons the moment they saw him. He realizes now, of course, that it was all part of the typical vampiric ploy to gain his trust; but at the time, apparently dazed by the mist despite all his precautions, he welcomed the sight of such a genial face, after months and months of trudging through the wilds and only coming into contact with civilization when he needed to drop by in a settlement such as Longhaven to restock his supplies and double-check his location on the map, before racing off after his prey again.  
  
Gods, what a blind old idiot he was! Instead of raising his blade and beheading her... it then and there, he bought into the creature's lies. The 'Altmer' talked on and on about how she was certain that 'evil vampires' were behind the tainted mist and the recent disappearances in Longhaven ('Evil vampires'! Hah! As if vampires could be anything but evil! The wording should also have made him think something was amiss!), and how 'the poor Bosmer needed help'. And he... he foolishly took her to be some idealistic girl who had read one adventure novel too many and decided to become a hero. He tried to dismiss her, confirming that vampires were, indeed, involved, and instantly adding that the hunt for the creatures was unforgiving to the weak. She listened to him attentively, nodding in understanding rather than pouting like he had expected her to, and then reassured him, her voice still soft but somehow confident at the same time,  
  
'I know magic, serjo. I can handle myself - and I really do wish to do what I can to reach the source of this corruption in the mist, and make sure that the people of Longhaven do not have to mourn any more of their loved ones'.  
  
He hmphed loudly at that, but, something inexplicably warm stirring in his chest when he heard the girl announce her intentions, begrudgingly agreed to meet her at the entrance to the cave where the vampire lord and his brood must have made their lair, as Mel had deduced from the pattern of disappearances and the movements of the blood-sucking bats and hoarvor that inhabited the marshland, providing fitting company to the creatures of the night.  
  
They went their separate ways for a while and, pushing back the confusing warmth and trying to keep treating the Altmer as an overly enthusiastic child, Mel told himself that he needed to be skeptical about her showing up. But she did. To his woe, she did. Just as he was about to carve through the entwined mossy branches that wove into the likeness of a door at the mouth of the cave, he spotted an already familiar white blur moving through the mist - and, to his own surprise, felt his upper lip curling in a smile. Before that, he had gone on for weeks, if not more, without exercising his facial muscles in this undignified way... That also should have been a warning signal. But no! Oh no! He just had to make an even greater fool of himself!  
  
As the Altmer girl raced up the mossy slope towards him, his mind was put to test again... A test that he shamefully failed. Gods, why, oh why did he allow the creature's words to worm into his mind? Why did he even begin to listen to her... to it? Why did he find it so moving when it... when she asked all those questions (even if he outwardly pretended not to care for them)? Why, before they went further into the cave, did he stop and ponder over what she had said?..  
  
  
'Serjo, wait!' she implored him, barely raising her voice, when she finally caught up with him, scooping up the hem of her long, Imperial-style robe (which must have been enchanted, for the fabric remained impeccably white even after she had crossed half the mire) with one hand and holding out an old, battered tome with the other.  
  
'I think you dropped this!'  
  
The book that she was carrying turned out to be a collection of notes on vampires and their hunters, which Mel carried with him and referred to sometimes, to remind himself of the price he had to pay to ensure that the darkness was properly banished - to repeat the important lesson that, as  vampires know no love or kinship, so must the vampire hunter reject these notions as well, for emotional attachment is a source of weakness and may be exploited by the spawn of the night to gain an upper hand in battle. How unfortunate that he had managed to misplace this book just at the time when he needed its wisdom the most!  
  
'Yes, I see, thank you,' he said curtly, accepting the tome from the Altmer and packing it into the small leather bag at his belt. 'Now let us move on! My old enemy, Faenir the Bloodletter, has to be within! With him and his coven gone, the mist shall clear!'  
  
But instead of following his command, the girl lingered; and the look on her face, as she regarded Mel with her large copper eyes, was akin to... pity. So demeaning - for the hunter to be pitied by the hunted!  
  
'I... I accidentally took a look inside when I picked it up,' she said, pulling awkwardly at the curls that framed her face. 'I did not mean to, but... But I did. And now I am worried... Are you... Are you following the book's advice? Trying to forget about all the things that it lists as "distractions"? Like family, and friends, and...'  
  
Mel cut her short with an impatient grunt and a vague jerk of his shoulder. His personal history was the last thing that he was willing to discuss on a crucial mission like this one. Not that there could be anything to discuss in the first place. He is a vampire hunter; this is his destiny, the one and only purpose of his existence. Everything else is irrelevant, and ought to be cast off - like dead skin, just as the book says. He may have thought differently in his youth, but after a long, long time of arduously pursuing his calling, he has managed to hone his mind and harden his heart, building up sufficient defenses against emotional distractions. The mental barrier is not perfectly impenetrable, though; and over the years, there have been people, men and women, that Mel grew fond of, sometimes secretly wishing to get to know them better, to invite them to be intimate with him, to stay behind by their side, sheathing his sword and allowing himself to rest after his hunt. But even though he cannot deny experiencing these little moments of weakness, Mel takes great pride in never actually following any of the disorienting impulses that would have caused him to forget his place in the world (the occasional guilty indulgence of spending a handful of coins at a pleasure house does not count, as it merely sates the body without affecting the mind, and Mel always keeps his sword within close reach, in case the place has been infiltrated by a vampire posing as one of the, uh, workers to catch its victims at their most vulnerable... which occurs more often than a stranger to the hunt might assume).  
  
No, it does not do for a vampire hunter to tie himself down with any connections closer than a fleeting night at a brothel, or a few fights back to back with a worthy warrior: at best, letting someone into his life would have tempted him to abandon his quest, allowing vampires to drain innocents of their blood, while their supposed slayer was sitting down to dinner with his family; and at worst, the despicable creatures would have taken revenge on their hunter, slaughtering all those he cared about. So if one strives to be a competent vampire hunter, this inevitably leads to spending one's whole life alone. To laymen and laymer, this may seem like too much of a sacrifice to make (indeed, Mel himself still catches himself feeling weary of his loneliness sometimes; a feeling that he promptly dispels). But this is not something that was up for debate - and thus, Mel had no wish to dwell on the subject when his companion returned his book to him. But in spite of him not saying anything, she did not let the matter rest... The cunning creature must have wanted to shake his confidence, to make him wallow in self-pity instead of channeling his battle rage into destroying Faenir.  
  
'You... You do, don't you?' she said, sounding almost tearful. 'You cut yourself off from people, sentence yourself to loneliness - because you think you are better off this way? I... I am so sorry, serjo! I... I know that loneliness hurts sometimes, and... Please pardon me for being so bold - but I just want to make sure you are not in too much pain'.  
  
Veloth preserve him, that was the creature's bait! The bait, dammit! And he swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker! He looked into her widened eyes, and smiled again (rather crookedly, but still), and replied,  
  
'I manage'.  
  
His tone was brusque, deliberately so - but as he turned away from the girl, giving her to understand that the conversation was over, he continued to mull over her words about the... uh... discomfort of loneliness... and found himself noting mentally that she was not... not entirely wrong... And also...  and also, he felt a sort of unspoken appreciation... gratitude even... for the girl's concern. But of course he did - because that was exactly what the creature wanted! To get him tangled up in his own thoughts and emotions! To make him submissive, to trick him into depending on her!  
  
And by Azura (corny as it sounds), things did not get any better as they progressed into the vampires' lair.


	2. Chapter 2

The rain keeps drumming its soft rhythm against the roots of the graht oak and the glistening leaves of some oversized fern that clings to the mighty tree. And now this is the only sound to be heard in this corner of the Valenwood jungle: the lowered, husky Dunmeri voice is no longer accompanying its watery song with its chanting. At some point, without even properly noticing it, Mel Adrys stopped praying, losing his grip on the mental crutch provided by his never-ending appeal to the gods, and completely giving in to the gnawing mess of feelings that is coiling amongst his innards, reaching everywhere from his stomach to his heart. He is still reliving his memories of the hunt for Faenir; still envisioning his companion's face, hearing echoes of her (deceptively) soothing voice, sorting through images of her walking, and eventually fighting, by his side, each recollection clearer and more persistent than the next. And when he thinks back to her, to that helpful young Altmer who turned out to be one of the very creatures he was supposed to eradicate, he can sense the subtle inklings of something quite unbecoming to a vampire hunter. Something wistful, something tender, something suspiciously, dangerously akin to fondness... And this pushes him deep, deep down, into the dizzying darkness of desperation and revulsion towards himself. Because this is wrong, wrong, wrong!  
  
The thrice-damned creature had started subjecting him to his will at the entrance to Faenir's cave, and did not stop afterwards, when, cutting short their conversation about the vampire hunter's unavoidable loneliness, Mel hacked at the door-like cluster of branches ahead of them, making them draw apart (no doubt, made alive by the bizarre magic that permeates the wilds of Valenwood) and clear the path downward, along the broad tunnel leading into the underground lair of the foul blood-suckers. Out of the corner of his eye, Mel could see the Altmer lingering behind him, placing her white, delicate hand onto the branches, which now bore deep charred gashes where his enchanted sword had bit into them. Murmuring something softly to herself, she passed her hand gently along the rough, gnarled bark, tiny tingling sparkles trailing in the wake of her fingertips and smoothing over the mangled black markings left by the flaming steel. A needlessly sentimental gesture, as far as Mel was concerned; a waste of valuable time and magicka reserves.   
  
But he did not really have time to scoff at the girl - for presently, with an all too familiar soft swoosh, a small black shadow darted swiftly towards him, gliding somewhere from the direction of the tunnel's further end, which was so far hidden from view by dense greenish murk. At least in this instance, Mel was still capable of recognizing the stealthy approach of a vampire. Faster than it takes a blinking eye to close and open again, he thrust his trusty blade forward, pressing its flaming tip against the smaller creature's chest. With an urgent, gasp-like outcry, the vampire raised its upper limbs up into the air, shedding the smoky black pall of the spell that had cloaked it. Upon closer inspection, it was revealed that the beast had once been a male Bosmer (which explained its minute stature); Mel could barely contain the urge to spit at the ground at the sight of how the wretch's (once quite pleasant) features had been warped by the sickly pallor and the bluish-purple net of veins bulging underneath its withered, parchment-like skin. A few days without gorging on blood, and the face of the Altmer girl will also turn into this hideous mask; Mel knows that now. If only he had guessed it before... It only he had paid more attention...  
  
But at the time, he was too distracted by the pathetic mewling of the Bosmeri vampire. Slanting it eyes in fear at the blade that brushed against its coarse leather garments, the creature pierced the ears of the cringing Mel with a shrill plea for mercy.  
  
'Please! Please let me live! Let me get out of here - far, far away from Faenir! Please listen! I never wanted this!' it cried out. 'Any of this! I did not agree to be part of this... mist plot! I tried to warn Faenir, but he didn't listen... Dark magic like this - it is just not our way! We... We were different once! We never preyed on the living; we fed on the hoarvor that drink the blood of the hunters! It was a good life; and we were content with it... Until he came - the Veiled One; he brought us the skull of an ancient vampire, told us that it held great power... power to infect the mist, and to create hundreds and hundreds of new thralls... He told us we did not have to hide any more...'  
  
'Oh dear,' the Altmer cut in suddenly, stepping forward with her hands clasped on her chest. 'And I suppose he also told you that all you needed to do in exchange for the skull was... "perform a small favour" and spread your mist as far as you could?'  
  
The tainted Bosmer nodded, bloodshot eyes widening.  
  
"To Woodhearth and beyond," the Veiled One said. How... How did you know?'  
  
'I have met his kind before,' the Altmer responded. Her tone was reserved and grave at first, but then she started growing more and more agitated, gesturing slightly and moving even closer to the Bosmer, so that if Mel tried to finish off the captured creature, he would have to cleave his way past her.   
  
'The Veiled Heritance. A group of Altmer who think all other races beneath them, and seek to destroy the Dominion for its ties with the Bosmer and the Khajiit. They have resorted to dark magic before - they are ready to do anything to achieve their goal'.  
  
The two of them would have gone on talking, but Mel would have none of it. He was determined to keep pursuing his quarry... not yet knowing that he was doomed to become ensnared by another vampire.  
  
'We are not here to babble about politics,' he snarled impatiently at the Altmer. 'Stand back, so I can feed my blade with this monster's flesh!'  
  
'But he is not a monster,' she argued, turning around and seeking out Mel's gaze, while her long, thin fingers flitted over the wrist of his sword arm. 'He is trying to help us! He earnestly wishes to right his kin's wrongs, by doing something good...'  
  
'There is no such thing as a good vampire,' Mel told her firmly, reciting the first rule that every vampire hunter needs to learn and embrace till he knows it as well as the rhythm of his own heartbeat. 'Just one that has not yet been tempted'.  
  
'But this mer before us has been tempted, and he resisted,' the Altmer pointed out, lowering her hand till her fingers finally closed in around Mel's wrist.  
  
Her grip was not tight - more like a caress, really - and if Mel willed, he could have (he should have!) shaken her off and cut her down, to get past her to the whimpering wild thing that she... it was shielding (because what else would a vampire do but protect its own kind? Damn, he will never forgive himself for missing this painfully obvious warning sign!). But he did not stir, pinned to the spot by the sincerity of her eyes... their clarity... their... Gods, he wasn't about to say 'beauty', was he?  
  
'There is so much anger in you...' she said at length, having carefully studied Mel's (doubtlessly quite stupid-looking) face. 'So little room for compassion. I was just like that, once... not too long ago. I was lonely, and in pain, and angry at my enemies and the whole world. I still feel angry sometimes - but I am trying to unlearn that. Anger does not help you fight back your loneliness: it only makes it worse'.  
  
Back in the present, amongst the roots of the graht oak, Mel leans forward with a frustrated grunt and hammers his fist against the soft, rustling carpet of grass and fallen leaves.  
  
Curse that conniving fiend! Curse her mellow, musical voice; curse the soft touch of her... of its, its, its white hands! Curse the creature for making Mel pay attention to what it said, and to what that other, little one said as well! For talking him into going soft!  
  
At least, he did not do anything utterly disgraceful like bursting into tears and confess that he did not want to feel angry any longer (Bah! As if he would ever abandon his righteous wrath! His noble hatred!). But still, rather than letting his blade feast on vampire flesh, Mel backed off and made a dismissive gesture at the cowering Bosmer husk.  
  
The Altmer had slipped her hand off his the moment she saw that he was about to move away, drawing a small sigh of relief - but she was still blocking Mel's approach to the other vampire, just in case. A fragile, innocent maiden in a white robe, standing in the way of his blade - gods, he fell for the illusion like a milksop of a beginner!  
  
'I tire of this pointless talk,' he said gruffly. 'And I have a feeling that it might go on and on if I don't make a choice. I shall not harm my companion to get to you, little creature. So... So I suppose you may run along - for now'.  
  
'Thank you! Thank you!' the little thing sang, dropping down into the mud and trying to kiss the tips of Mel's boots (this made the Dunmer stagger even further away from the vampire, gagging in disgust and muttering, 'Filth' under his breath). 'Everyone else that opposed the Veiled One has already escaped; the remaining bloodkin guard Faenir and his two lieutenants, Athraedal and Lathriel, each in their own quarters in a separate chamber of the cavern. Best of luck to the two of you! I hope you can stop this madness!'  
  
With that, it scrambled to its feet, scraping awkwardly at the ground with its small clawed hands, and scurried off, ducking underneath the freshly healed branches and racing downhill till it was swallowed by the mist. The Altmer saw the vampire off with a meek wave of her hand and a small 'Farewell' - but Mel, of course, would not deign to give the creature a second glance. His initial inclination had been to yell a final warning over his shoulder, something along the lines of 'Don't think I will not be hunting you down later!'... but for some reason, he did not quite find it in him. So instead, he had to resort to throwing his head back proudly, and leading the march further down.  
  
  
With a weary groan, Mel passes his hand over his face, a shudder creeping up his body, even though the air still remains warm and humid. The memories that follow the encounter with the 'helpful' vampire fill him with even more disdain towards himself than before - while at the same time, that wistfulness, too, grows stronger, and the clash between the two sentiments makes his temples throb with shattering pain.  
  
As he can recall, he and the Altmer walked in strained silence, with Mel wondering to himself what had come over him to make him let that Bosmer thing go so easily (the vile influence of that girl, that's what!) - until the tunnel opened into a vast underground space, with ribbons of the same sickly mist trailing over its floor. Clinging on to the cavern's ceiling, were several clusters of elongated dark objects, resembling large leathery cocoons. Mel had delved into enough vampire lairs to know what these were - enormous, monstrous bats, asleep with their webbed wings folded. Such repulsive creatures, with flattened faces and upturned triangular noses and leering toothy mouths with a cleft upper lip, often accompanied vampires on their hunt, and in the dank, murky corners where they nested. They, too, fed on the blood of mortals, and their size, which far exceeded that of regular bats - the way the size of a Khajiit exceeds that of a house cat - often made Mel think that they had once been people (Bosmer in this case), turned by the evil curse into a lesser breed of vampires, bound to guard and serve their masters in exchange for morsels of living flesh. Despicable - utterly despicable!  
  
Ordinary travellers would have like preferred to sneak cautiously across the cavern while the beasts were sleeping - but not him. Not Mel. He would never run away from a fight - especially now, when he had spared a vampire's pathetic excuse for a life, and needed to make up for it somehow, to put his own mind at ease. Cleansing the cave from vampire minions would have to do.  
  
Squaring his shoulders, Mel lifted his sword high over his head, the golden shimmer of the enchantment snatching a portion of the cavern out of the clutches of the grey misty haze - and yelled at the top of his lungs,  
  
'You shall be purified!'  
  
The rumbling echo of his voice spread all around him, like ripples from a stone thrown into a stagnant pond. With a succession of squeaking and rustling noises, the leathery clusters began to stir, and, a few moments later, the bats tore themselves away from the rock surface and plummeted down, wings flapping furiously in the moist, slightly rank air.  
  
Finding himself swarmed by what seemed like at least a dozen of the grotesque creatures, Mel swung his sword in front of him, cleaving off the deformed heads of two or three bats and searing the bodies of several others with the fiery enchantment, forcing them to retreat a few paces, squawking in pain as the lingering tongues of flame still danced on their sharp shoulders and along their fleshy wings. Eventually, the fire did its work, and the creatures floated clumsily to the ground, curling up into charred husks beneath the blanket of low-hanging mist. Most of the brood, however, remained unaffected by Mel's scorching strike; they circled over his head, blocking his vision with their webby limbs, deafening him with their high-pitched cries, and clawing ferociously at his armour, in an attempt to find a weak spot. He struck down a few more of them, but that was still not enough to make the wriggling, flapping cloud over his head disperse; the bats pressed down upon him, threatening to knock him back, to overwhelm him, to...  
  
'Umm... Serjo... It is probably not my place to say this - but aggravating to many enemies all at once is probably a bad idea'.  
  
These words, uttered shyly, unobtrusively, as if by a young teacher who is still too timid to gain control of the classroom, were followed by a flash of golden light. A glowing magical lance, which looked like a ray of purest sunshine forged into a weapon, slashed at the flocking bats, piercing one right through the heart. As the creature wheezed in agony and sank to the floor, with the spear-like sun beam that killed it slowly melting away, the other bats scattered in fear, chased by a volley of glowing orbs, each of which erupted into a splash of golden glow, far brighter than the flames cloaking Mel's sword, and devoured three bats at a time. Before long, the entire flapping dark cloud dispersed, and the Dunmer could finally look around again. The memory of what he saw leads the struggle between two opposite feelings within him to an excruciating climax, making him huff loudly and clutch his aching head. On the one hand, he viciously despises himself for becoming so mesmerized by the sight of the Altmer girl - the Altmer vampire! - standing over a pile of singed and shrivelled-up bat bodies, clasping another shining ethereal lance with her thin fingers... But on the other... Dear gods, she looked so... yes, so beautiful! Tall and somehow imposing, despite her frail built... regal even, with that white robe of hers (still miraculously unsoiled) and a circlet on the top of her head reflecting the golden shimmer of her magic, making it seem like her whole being was imbued with some inner light, like a beacon amid the foggy gloom of the cavern... Dammit, he is waxing poetic again!  
  
But truth be told, now that Mel knows what a dark, cursed being his companion really is, her little magical display leaves him quite puzzled (another drop in the broiling concoction of his headache!). Spellcraft of this kind, the capacity to harness the raw energy of sunlight - these are the abilities of a Templar. And most of the Templars that Mel ever knew have always been honourable, righteous people, staunchly devoted to their faith in the Tribunal, or Auri-El, or the Eight Divines, or what have you, and abhorring evil as much as he does. How then can their special skills, which require strength of character and a noble heart, be mimicked by a creature of the night? Could this all have been yet another illusion, aimed to mesmerize and subjugate him even further? Or maybe the vampire had recently killed a Templar and absorbed his or her knowledge through some dark magic? Or maybe she actually is... No, that would be impossible! He said so himself: there is no such thing as a good vampire!   
  
But no matter how the creature managed to pull this off, the fact remains: it... she saved his life. He acknowledged it back in the cavern, with a curt nod and a brief remark, 'I see you were not lying when you said you could handle yourself' (he made it sound as casual and indifferent as he could, but he failed miserably to hold back a new smile, and even a small sigh of admiration). And he was to acknowledge the same thing a few more times, as he and the Altmer progressed closer and closer to the heart of the vampires' nesting grounds.


	3. Chapter 3

After their encounter with the bats, Mel and his companion crossed the first cavernous chamber of Faenir's lair, and found themselves at the mouth of yet another tunnel, which then merged with another, with forked into two more, and so forth without an end in sight - a whole labyrinth of subterranean passages, twisting and turning and getting tangled up like the root system of some enormous tree. The resemblance was made even stronger by the fact that the tunnel walls were covered with a thick, slimy layer of wet moss, giving them a deep green colour. At each of the crossroads, Mel would scrape off some off the moss with the tip of his blade, drawing a large dark X to mark the turn that they had already taken; the first time he did this, the Altmer beamed at him and said, 'Good thinking, serjo!'; having heard that, he raised an eyebrow and said, 'Naturally' (this made it easier to pretend that the invisible force pulling at his lips was a self-assured smirk, rather than a flattered smile).  
  
On and on they went, seeking out the three chief vampires' so-called 'living quarters' - and now and again, they had to fight back packs of underground dwellers that attempted to stop them. They are mostly vampires - guarding Faenir and the other two leaders of their brood, just like the Bosmer at the entrance had warned them. Their faces bore even more visible markings of their curse, many resembling skulls with bluish skin pulled taut over them; and unlike that helpful little creature, they barely spoke, lunging at Mel and the Altmer with low feral growls, reaching for their throats with snapping jaws. Mel disposed of most of them quite swiftly, and where the work of his blade was not enough, the Altmer finished the job with her golden magic, pinning her leering adversaries to the cavern walls with her burning lance or reducing them to ash with blasts of sun fire. More often than not, when yet another cursed creature fell at her feet, she looked down at it with a look of pity on her pale face (also with a hint of... sadness? Or was it disappointment? Mel has never been particularly good at sorting through emotions).  
  
A girl with her head in the clouds, still looking for 'good vampires', Mel told himself as he called out to her, impatiently but not unkindly, and reminded her that they needed to keep moving. But now, he knows better. Now, he has seen what lies beneath that sweet, compassionate mask. And all he can do as, kneeling in his makeshift shelter, he repeats that fateful underground journey inside his mind, is berate himself endlessly for not breaking the enchantment sooner.  
  
Apart from vampires, they also fought more than a few giant spiders - which, just like those grotesque bats, often serve the bloodsucking fiends as companions. Fitting pets for the monsters of the night. It was during a clash with these creatures that the Altmer saved Mel's life again, strengthening his admiration for her, which still lingers in his heart, despite... despite everything.  
  
Mel remembers, all too vividly, finding himself with his back against the wall, and with a spider the size of a well-fed guar - the last, and apparently meanest, one of the group he had been fighting - standing on its four hind limbs inches away from him, as the remaining four probed the air in front of the cornered Dunmer's face, and a set of eight bottomless black eyes stared hungrily into his (not the most pleasant of sights, but nowhere near to frightening someone who hails from a land where crawling, many-legged things are part of the landscape). The girl was out of reach, occupied by a fight of her own, with a score of smaller spiderlings crawling all over her and trying to pull her away from another fat-bellied big one that she was aiming at with her conjured lance. And in any case, Mel would never have reduced himself to begging for aid - not from her, nor anyone else. He was going to slice up that oversized bug completely in his own.. Or so he thought to himself.  
  
Snarling through clenched teeth, Mel struck at the spider's groping legs with his sword, slicing through two of them with the familiar ripe crunch of chitin that usually makes him think of his very first adventures in Morrowind... Not that he ever allows himself to give in to such mushy drivel. Yes, he might have referred to Morrowind as his home, like many other Dunmer do - but he cannot. He has no home, and never will. And this bloody digression is likely the influence of that talk he had with the vampire about loneliness. Hmph.  
  
After being cut off, the spider's legs fell to the ground, and in the process, the long, sharp bristles that covered them traced a few bleeding scratches across Mel's cheek. It would have been nothing to concern himself with - but at the same moment, the creature's enormous belly rippled and its gleaming, massive pincers drew apart - and just as Mel raised his sword again to defend himself, he felt a sort of burning sizzle scorching his face, followed by a sweeping wave of cold. The spider had spat a whole jet of dark-green, acidic venom at him, and, getting into the zigzagging markings where his skin had been peeled off, it instantly began to take effect. By the Three, the vile substance had a stronger kick to it than the Sailor's Warning Grog they serve at the New Life Festival!  
  
As it spread through his body, Mel felt his arms detach themselves from his body and float away somewhere into the fuzzy green clouds that glided over his head. His sword, presumably, drifted off together with them; at least, Mel thought he could hear a dull clang of metal against the ground, through the ringing noise that filled his ears. After his arms, his legs fell off as well, making him sink to the ground, while the spider lowered itself on its remaining limbs next to him, weaving a silvery thread of its web. Even with the venom benumbing his whole body and befuddling his mind, Mel still retained a firm enough grip on his wits to realize what was about to happen to him - and b'wek, he had no intention of becoming critter food!  
  
Mustering the last shreds of his strength that had not yet dissolved amidst all the fuzziness, he rolled forward, snapping a few more of the creature's legs underneath his weight (he could not tell how many exactly, as the spider's outline was constantly swimming back and forth before his eyes, duplicating and triplicating itself). If only he hadn't lost feeling in his neck - he could have caved the bloody bug's eyes, too, with a well-aimed headbutt... But that did not prove to be necessary - for, while Mel was already slipping away, a kaleidoscope of nonsensical images filling his darkening mind (some of them, much to his current shame, seemed to involve his hands stroking the pristine white cloth and playing with the bouncing locks of light-brown hair), there came another golden flash. The triple spider fell back into the midst of the cloudy green swirls, three glimmering lances sticking out of its three ruptured, oozing bellies.   
  
With the creature gone, Mel vaguely felt himself being propped up against something solid (the wall? the ground? the ceiling?), a muffled voice calling out to him,  
  
'Serjo? Serjo, please - stay with me!'  
  
That was when, stupefied by the spider's venom, Mel added one more mistake to this day's shameful litany. He let the vampire know his name.  
  
'It's Mel...' he slurred, blinking slowly, as his blurry and distorted field of view filled with tingling, iridescent threads of magic, which twisted and danced in the air, wrapping gently around his limp, sagging body. 'Mel... Adrys...'  
  
'Mel Adrys,' the voice repeated after him, sounding a little louder and clearer this time, while some of the fuzzy green murk ebbed away, allowing Mel to discern the Altmer (only one of her, thankfully), kneeling in front of him, the glow of a healing spell flowing from her cupped hands.  
  
'That's a lovely name... It suits you. Mine is Lavinia. Lavinia Verticordis - but I rarely use my family name any more'.  
  
'Neither do I,' Mel confessed. As the threads of light caressed his face and closed the dark, rancid infected gash in his cheek, the icy numbness of the spider venom was replaced by a comfortable warmth, reminding him of the rare occasions when he had allowed himself to relax in a warm bath. This serene, drowsy feeling made him inclined towards frank conversation - something that he never would have allowed if he was in full command of his mind and body.  
  
'I mean...' he whispered groggily, watching the girl though narrow slits between his heavy, drooping eyelids, 'What is the point of using a family name... when you have... no family?'  
  
He must have made this remark sound as piteous as the squealing of the Bosmer creature at the entrance to the cave - for the girl, while still casting her spell with one hand, wrapped her free arm over his shoulders.  
  
This part of his recollections also puzzles Mel (damn, will his headache never subside?). Admittedly, he was still half-unconscious at the moment - but he is reasonably certain that the girl did, in fact embrace him... And maybe even muttered something, as the side of her face pressed against his, her skin refreshingly cool against the flushed spot where the scratches had throbbed not too long ago. Something along the lines of, 'I know'.  
  
Most baffling. Most baffling indeed. Here he was, completely in her power; with his reflexes still slow and with feeling just barely returning to his limbs, he would have been unable to pick his sword off the ground in time to prevent her from attacking him. All she had to do, with her head so close to his neck, was lean closer and feed... And yet - and yet she did nothing of the sort, choosing to heal him, and to cradle him protectively like a drowsy child, and to comfort him when he let it slip that he had no family. Could she really have... understood what he meant? Could all that talk of hers, about having experienced anger and loneliness - could it have been sincere? Especially bearing in mind the reply she gave him when, some time after their embrace, he gradually began to straighten up on wobbly legs with her help, and suddenly asked her, in the same thick, slow voice,  
  
'Isn't... La... Lavinia... An Imprrrial name?'  
  
'I was raised by humans'.  
  
Her words were a little abrupt, like Mel's 'I manage' from before; but he did not really give much heed to their tone, or possible meaning, too overcome by relief (and just a hint of undignified, boyish joy) upon realizing that his muscles and sinews had finally gotten reattached to their proper places, and he had regained the ability to see and think with crystal clarity. Now, on the other hand, when he is at leisure to sort through his mind (overcrowded as it is), he cannot help but ponder...   
  
She was raised by humans - and humans are notoriously short-lived. Add to that the curse of vampirism, which has obviously extended her own meric lifespan even further than is natural.  
  
All of this has to mean that... she could well be the last remaining member of her family. And it seems like she actually... realizes what a burden she carries? That she is actually capable of grieving? But that would contradict everything Mel knows about vampires, everything he has learned and taught others! A vampire that can cast purifying healing magic; a vampire that is caring and empathetic; a vampire that grasps the notion of family... What an array of impossible paradoxes!  
  
No, no, no! There are no paradoxes! No purity, no empathy, no sincere grief! Just figments of his own imagination, induced by the dangerous proximity to Lav... to that creature! And to prove that to himself, he only has to think back to the moment when the cunning monster revealed its true nature.


	4. Chapter 4

Of the three vampires that commanded the brood in the caverns, Athraedal lurked the closest to the entrance tunnels. At least, Mel assumed it was Athraedal: Lathriel sounded like a female name, and it was the drained husk of a male Bosmer that appeared before the two companions, seemingly weaving itself out of the jets of water that, coiling and swaying like a Redguard conjurer's serpents, slowly arose from the ankle-deep puddles covering the floor of the vampire's so-called 'living quarters' like splashes of glossy ink. At the same time, this creature was definitely not Faenir, whom Mel had been tracking for many years and whose gaunt, bloodless face he could see before himself with his eyes closed (not the way he is seeing Lavinia's face, however... Oh, dammit, not another poetic digression!).  
  
When the accursed blood fiend manifested itself, the Altmer girl lifted her hand hesitantly, as if attempting to reason with the beast (she must have taken advantage of Mel getting momentarily preoccupied by fighting back a lone bat a few paces away from her; if he had joined her sooner, he would never have allowed such dawdling).  
  
'Please listen to me,' she said softly, while the creature steadily glided closer and closer to her over the still, pitch-black water surface. 'Your blood brother was right to warn you. You may be... changed now, but you and your coven are still Bosmer. And the Veiled Heritance view the Bosmer as an inferior race. They would never have offered you a deal on equal terms. They will likely betray you all after you spread your mist as they want you to. They...'  
  
Her (ludicrously pointless, as Mel grumbled to himself, kicking the bat's dead body away from him and striding towards her) attempt at persuasion was cut short, when the vampire - now so close that the Altmer, tall as she was, could have reached out and grabbed it by the scalp - lifted one of its wiry pale arms and, holding up its long-nailed hand, prepared to cast one of those foul, lifeforce-draining spells that its kin are so fond of using. There was a small cloud of blood-red mist hovering over its palm, ready to spread and to ensnare the Altmer; in retrospect, Mel is almost certain that it would have had no effect on Athraedal's fellow vampire - but when he actually spotted the crimson glow of this dark magic, pouring through the gaps between the beast's spread-out claws, he had no idea that the startled (and rather regretful-looking) girl did not need, or deserve, saving.  
  
Thus, he darted forward, knocking Lavinia back and bringing his blade down upon Athraedal with such crushing, almost desperate force, that the blade sank into the blood fiend's narrow, bony chest nearly up to the hilt, and then lifted its listless form up into the air, the flames of the enchantment engulfing the vampire whole. For a moment, it seemed to Mel that a see-through, reddish shade detached itself from the slain creature, mirroring its likeness like a reflection in some ghostly mirror. But all it took was a single confused blink - and the shade was gone, leaving behind nothing but a burned-up carcass, toasting slowly on a flaming blade like a piglet on a spit. Tossing his head from side to side like a rain-drenched hound, Mel lowered his weapon, together with the grizzly fleshy ornament that adorned it (a rather heavy one, too, despite the Bosmer vampire's small size), and then yanked the blade free, with dark, gooey threads of gore trailing after it.  
  
Somewhere behind him, a quiet voice gently intoned, 'Thank you' - and Mel was astounded to experience another thing that he had managed without for weeks, months, years even... A blush. Damn her... it to the Void - the thrice-cursed thing made him blush like a flustered child!  
  
'I... I do what has to be done,' he muttered, clearing his throat and wiping his blade on some springy pale moss that grew near the water. 'Do not think I leapt to your defense out of a particular... personal fondness'.  
  
'Personal fondness is good, though,' she said jokingly, while glancing around the flooded cavern to see down which of the tunnels that branched out of it they had already travelled. 'Not necessarily towards... someone like me - but it's good. I still don't think you should force yourself to live by that book of yours'.  
  
'This passage not have my cross mark,' Mel interrupted her, pointing ahead. 'Let us keep moving'.  
  
On their way to defeat the second vampire (who turned out to be female, and therefore had to be Lathriel), Mel and the Altmer... Lavinia shared another awkward experience that now makes him want to tear out his hair and hammer his stupid old head against the graht oak's trunk till he caves in his own skull.   
  
One of the tunnels they had to follow during their exploration of the cavern suddenly turned into a precariously narrow stone bridge, arching above a deep, dank pit, with sections of bone-strewn floor barely showing underneath a heaving blanket of spider webs. A fall down there was sure to result in a feast for a new merry company of venom-spitting critters - which Mel could even hear skittering in the darkness (for a Dunmer, the dry clicking of sharp chitin claws against the stone is a sound that cannot be mistaken for anything else). They were waiting, no doubt, just like their two-legged masters would wait, for the warm-blooded travellers to misstep off the path into thin air and then drop down, right into the middle of their dinner table  
  
'Watch your step,' Mel said in a lowered voice - and then placed his hand clumsily somewhere a little way above the waist of his companion, who was walking in front of him in single file. The gesture was meant to support her, nothing more - but seconds after his gauntlet rested on her robe, Mel jerked his hand away and stumbled backwards, intending to distance himself from the Altmer as much as possible, as he suddenly remembered the vision he had had while under the influence of the spider venom. He reminded himself repeatedly that this was hardly the time or the place for such sentiments - and that Lavinia was probably the kind of woman that he would want to do more with than just satisfy a fleeting urge for physical proximity; the kind of woman that was made for long, pensive walks to meet the rising sun, and for days of accompanying one another on wherever adventure took them, and for evenings of sharing tales of past journeys... something that would never happen, not with him, no matter how much she might chirp about not living by the book. In fact, Mel got so carried away by berating himself that he almost lost his own balance and toppled down to become a snack for spiders (again); and the Altmer had to pull him back on firm ground with the shining threads of her magic - a feat that must have required quite a bit of exertion on her part, since Mel is not exactly built like a bundle of matchsticks (not to mention clad in a full set of traditional Dunmeri-styled heavy armour). And yet when he stopped staggering and she glanced at him over her shoulder to make certain that he was safe, he did not see a single droplet of sweat on her tall white brow... But of course he didn't! Vampires often posses unnatural physical strength - keeping him from falling down must have been as easy for her as holding up a feather! That was another warning sign - and where was his honed, observant mind? Yes, right - wandering among fluffy pink clouds, with his age and battle experience all fading into the background, cast back like a mask hiding the gawking face of a smitten youth!  
  
'This was all so foolish,' Mel whispers back in the present, pressing his palms together in front of his face and shutting his eyes. 'Blasted vampiric seduction... Made me imagine a whole... married life... with the thing'.  
  
Dear gods, it grows ever harder, thinking of her as 'thing' and 'it'. No matter how many times he corrects himself, he just keeps referring to her... as Lavinia. Lavinia... The beautiful, mysterious Lavinia, so delicate and yet so strong; one of the gentlest, and yet, curiously, most courageous, travelling companions he has had in a long time (though admittedly, he had not had that many companions to begin with, carefully heeding the tenets of his book).  
  
She came to his aid again, when, a short while after the mishap on the stone arch, they faced down Lathriel.  
  
The second of this cave's three masters, a dishevelled, ragged female creature with a face so pale it seemed to glow in the dark, had another brood of spiders at its beck and call. All it had to do, when Mel and Lavinia barged into the small pocket of the underground maze where it was resting, was straighten up and tap at the ground with the thin, gnarled staff it was carrying - and in an instant, the cavern's walls and floor turned into bristling grey-and-brown streams, with scores of black eyes floating along them.  
  
Fortunately, neither Mel nor his companion was particularly squeamish - but the sheer number of critters of all sizes that had crawled out to attack them disoriented the two for a few moments. As, stunned and motionless, they watched the spiders advance, it took but one instant for the blighted many-legged things to cast the sticky net of their web on Lavinia, rooting her to the spot. Mel, in the meanwhile, was faced with a whole swelling pillar of spiders, rising almost three heads taller than his own height. Before this morbid construct, woven out of countless wriggling legs and unblinking eyes, could swallow him whole, Mel struck the first blow, carving through the middle of the spider tower with his flaming blade - which caused it to fall apart, slashed-off, oozing halves of critter bellies flying in all directions, while their severed legs littered the floor, still reflexively attempting to claw at Mel's boots.  
  
Some of the spiders, however, escaped the main impact of Mel's crushing swing; and as they landed on the ground, they instantly charged back at him. This time, Mel tried to be more careful, and to avoid getting splashed with venom once again... But how could he fully concentrate on the battle when, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lavinia, ripping apart her glue-like greyish binds (again, with what must have been quite an exercise of strength, which could never have been expected from a mortal with a body as fragile as hers) - only to have the spiders crawl all over her once more, their webs getting into her eyes and mouth.  
  
What if they poisoned her, Mel asked himself frantically - what if she felt the same numbness as he did, and succumbed to it, her mind and body drowning in waves of cold? He would be unable to heal her the way she healed him; he had a few potions on his person, but he was not certain if they would be enough... Ah, what of it, the by-the-book voice of reason tried to counter his doubts (gods, if only he had listened to it more!) - what of it? He had known her for what, a few hours? She meant nothing to him, and never would have, despite all those delirious visions. He would pause to mourn her death, of course - but then, he would move on, like he always did... Like he was supposed to...  
  
The voice of reason trailed off, unheeded - and, squashing any spiders that got in his way, Mel stomped across the cavern floor to get closer to Lavinia... Only to have his way blocked by Lathriel, staff ablaze with hissing destructive magic. With a practiced move, Mel leaped aside to dodge the incoming blinding blast of spell power; this appeared to infuriate the vampire, as it bared its long, curving fangs and, forgetting all about its staff, lunged at the hunter, wrapping its limbs tightly round him like a creeping plant that had suddenly come alive. Knowing what had to be done, Mel mustered all of his strength and agility to keep Lathriel off his neck, whirling together with the vampire in a bizarre sort of dance that seemed to involve lots of tugging and pulling in different directions.  
  
Their struggle pushed them towards a rickety bookcase that the creature had erected in its nest (Mel shuddered at the thought what sort of literature this feral thing might enjoy) - and for a moment, he thought that he might be gaining the upper hand, as he finally tore the accursed leech off him and, shoving at the flimsy piece of furniture with his shoulder, dropped it down on top of the vampire. After wincing slightly at the prolonged creak the bookcase had made as it fell, Mel steadied his breath and glanced down at mess of book pages and dead spiders all around him; then, he decided that it was high time to check on Lavinia - except that he was prevented from doing so once more, as, with an even more ear-splitting creak, the back side of the bookcase (which was now facing upwards) shattered into countless splinters, split by the force of the trapped vampire thrusting its staff upwards, with that telltale unmeric strength. Like a pale larva crawling out of a hole in the tree bark, Lathriel emerged from beneath the debris, more furious than before. Mel has no way of knowing how he would have fared in the second confrontation with the enraged creature: his victory over it was handed to him by his companion.  
  
As both Lathriel and Mel readied their weapons, preparing for another deadly dance, the toppled bookcase on which the vampire was standing suddenly began to glow - white and yellow like the midday sun, throbbing with a hot glare that would have blinded Mel if he did not shield his eyes. Soon, the vampire found itself balancing on top of a giant, ever-swelling burning orb, which licked at its lower limbs with hungry tongues of golden flame. With a hoarse scream, the creature threw back its head and swayed, like a wax figure sways and bends and caves under its own weight, melting in a raging furnace. Upon sinking into the sun fire completely, the vampire was briefly replaced by same red-tinted wraith that had appeared when Athraedal was slain – but then it too, evaporated.  
  
Having swallowed Lathriel up, the orb vanished, just as suddenly as it appeared, revealing that the bookcase had remained miraculously undamaged - save for the broad crack made in it by the vampire, and a thin layer of ash powdering its edges.  
  
'Lavinia?' Mel asked, looking around, 'Was that... Your magic?'  
  
'Yes...' she replied, with a small wave, intended to draw his attention to her, as she reclined wearily against a pile of dead spiders, her face still half-smeared in cobwebs and her narrow shoulders hunched (perhaps, for all her reserves of strength, she did have her limits when it came to fighting - or perhaps it was all an act to wring pity out of Mel... which, he regrets to say, served its purpose quite well).  
  
'Had to... Deal with these things first... before it could... help you... I was worried... I might not... have time... to...'  
  
To add to the overall picture, her voice, which was normally not the loudest, now trailed off to an almost noiseless movement of her lips - and this caused Mel to feel one of those distracting exact pangs of worry that the book warned him about.  
  
'You are not wounded, are you?' he asked, crouching in front of Lavinia and making a hesitant grabbing movement somewhere in the general vicinity of her hand.  
  
'No,' she reassured him. 'Just tired... That spell was a bit tricky to cast...'  
  
She swallowed and looked up at him, forcing herself to speak up.  
  
'Are you afraid I'll slow you down?'  
  
'No,' he said - an answer he would not have given most of the casual acquaintances he had occasionally allowed to go on expeditions with him. 'No. Take your time to rest. We started this together, and we shall finish this together'.  
  
And finish they did... In a way that is now still causing Mel all this damnable torment.


	5. Chapter 5

After Lavinia recovered from her solar magic blast (or pretended to recover, the cunning blood-sucker... damn, Mel really must fight this urge to feel guilty over calling her that), they traversed some more dark, cobwebbed tunnels - and finally arrived at Faenir's chamber of the cavern. Mel had barely crossed the threshold of the vast underground space, with a vaulted, stalactite-covered ceiling, when he spotted it. His quarry. The illusive, bloodthirsty abomination in the body of a sullen, dark-haired Bosmer that he had been chasing for what feels like his entire life - reclining against the back of a large throne, pieced together out of what looked like human bones, with various hides and leathers stretched over them; and surrounded by several other, apparently less sentient vampires, which crouched at the throne's base, clawing at the ground and swivelling their heads like apes eating bugs off the jungle floor.  
  
By Veloth, the creature was so close, so very close... After all this time, finally within his reach! He was not going to not let the beast get away again - not like when it melted into the mist in the moors of Bal Foyen, its body torn by the ravenous bites of Mel's blade. Mel had hoped that, while he was circling about in the blue fog, the round tops of the mushroom trees floating by overhead on the waves of the gloaming, Faenir would succumb to the wounds that the sword's enchantment had burned into the vampiric flesh... But the creature had ended up dragging itself into a small slaver encampment on the edge of the wetlands - which Mel would stumble upon in the morning, when it had already turned into an enormous pile of rubble, with fresh, glistening smears of blood and dead bodies everywhere: Argonians and their captors alike, eyes glassily translucent, dark puncture marks on their throats.  
  
Yes, Faenir had escaped him then - as if had happened again, a few years afterward, in the sands of Alik'R, when the creature had gotten the upper hand (claw?) simply because the week-long trek across the broiling desert, in an attempt to track down the vampire while it was hiding from the sun, had left Mel weakened by a natural thirst for water, something that had been alien to Faenir for a couple of centuries. But now, as Mel told himself, boldly stepping forward and strengthening the hold on his sword's hilt, a triumphant sneer playing on his lips - now things were going to be different. Now, victory would certainly be his, because he... because he wasn't alone.  
  
Again, Mel's heart filled with that ill-placed appreciation, when he glanced sideways at Lavinia, who was walking by his side, nursing a handful of sparkles in her cupped hands - which, as he now knew, would blossom into a healing spell as soon as it was needed. This was going to be glorious, a gleeful voice sang inside him as he quickened his pace, noting that the master vampire had slowly turned its head, its sunken eyes focusing unblinkingly on his. This was going to be his most memorable battle against the forces of evil - with him smiting his old nemesis side by side with his new comrade! Dear gods, he could not have been more right... and more wrong at the same time. For the demise of Faenir Blood-Letter was not destined to become what Mel now remembers this battle for.  
  
'You again,' the abomination hissed, rising slowly from its seat. 'You think to chase us down, to crush us - to stomp at us with these ugly boots of yours as if we were rats... Well, we might have been rats, once, scurrying in the grass, gnawing on hoarvor leftovers when we should have been feasting on succulent flesh... But no more! The Veiled One...'  
  
'The Veiled One is using you!' Lavinia piped in, her voice coming out like a gasp. 'That skull he gave you is better off destroyed!.. And Sera Mel's boots are not ugly!'  
  
Faenir's eyes flashed bright-crimson: the girl had clearly enraged the fiend by interrupting its soliloquy (and for the best - Mel would not have been able to bear all this ranting much longer). With a wave of its bloodless, corpse-like hand, it commanded its feral minions to rise; and, snarling and passing their long dark tongues over their purple-tinted lips, they locked Mel into a steadily tightening circle, similarly to the bats and spiders he had encountered before. Well, he would just have to take care not to get overwhelmed again. This was nothing that he could not handle: cautious, well-calculated steps, eyes on the adversaries, blade held firm - and he would clear a swathe for himself through these lumbering blood-suckers, and make his way towards Faenir. The lesser creatures' master, as Mel could deduce by the sounds that reached his sensitive elven ears, was busily dodging the simmering orbs of light that Lavinia was tossing at it; hopefully, the girl would leave at least some part of the vampire for him to finish off.  
  
But as fate would have it, the battle soon started shaping out not quite according to this plan that Mel had sketched for himself. He did fell a few of the feral vampires that were swaying and growling in front of him, while also managing to leave a burn or two across the deformed faces of those coming at him from the sides - but when the path was clear enough for him to advance at Faenir, he discovered that the cunning fiend had ducked behind a seemingly unbreakable meat shield of zombies, most likely made out of the rotting parts of the hapless hunters that it had lured into its lair by casting that sickly mist over the town of Longhaven, and then ripped apart and left on the ground to decay, ruptured guts and pale eye balls and bits of sinew all mushing together into a sort of gorey equivalent of forest foliage (and rather rancid smelling one, too, though Mel has had all kinds of olfactory experiences over the course of his career as a vampire hunter, which has caused him to develop a bit of an immunity).    
  
With Faenir out of her reach, Lavinia was left to deal with the vampire's putrescent guardians. It looked like she was doing her utmost to make her sun fire eruptions as frequent and devastating as possible - but the moment one zombie fell back, its greenish, mouldy limbs crumbling into ash, another one rose in its place, seemingly even more hideous (and more relentless) with every time. A battle against such an uncontrollable stream of adversaries was clearly one not to be... not to be fought alone.  
  
'What about me, you vile ghouls?' Mel cried out, hammering his fist against his chestplate to gain the shambling corpses' attention. 'Am I not worthy of being splashed with slime?'  
  
Grunting in unison, the cohort of zombies turned away from Lavinia and began shuffling the rancid chunks of spoiled meat that were once their lower extremities in another direction. Mel smirked, raising his sword in a mighty upswing - but before he could chop a charred cut of mort flesh, something pulled at him from behind. Some of the feral vampires were still standing - and, grabbing at him with their clawed hands (some even managed to sink their talon-like nails deep into the gaps between the metal plates, where his back and arms now bear small, pockmark-like scars), they engaged in a morbid tug of war with the approaching zombies... Which would probably have been amusing had it not been so damn painful.  
  
Through a  forest of rotting limbs that rose all around him, some yanking at his hair, others attempting to scratch out his eyes or slice at his jugular, Mel could just barely make out Lavinia's face - which seemed to have turned a few shades paler, the last traces of the Altmeri golden skin tone getting completely replaced by an unnatural bluish hue, while her eyes widened in fear and anger and filled with the same blood-red fire as Faenir's. That was the moment when she showed herself for what she really was; the moment when the illusion was cast off, and Mel realized what a horrible, disastrous failure his mission had turned out to be. An arrogant old fool, used to breezing his way through dungeons and caverns where dark things creep, he had thought himself immune to the befuddling mist that billowed around Longhaven like a bottomless, treacherous sea... And yet he had drowned in that very sea, and did not even notice.  
  
Throwing back his head, so that the ends of his hair almost brush against the leafy carpet in his woodland shelter, Mel clutches at his chest. That feeling is back - the same feeling that overcame him when he gaped at Lavinia, no longer bothering to try and fight off the throng of undead that all wanted a piece of him. He expected to fell outraged, both by her betrayal and his own blind trust in her - but instead, he was stung by sharp, searing pain... As if something had broken inside of him and the shards were now piercing his chest. Of course, back then, part of the pain could have come from the markings left by his assaulters' claws - but now this shattering sensation definitely does not come from a physical source.  
  
It is almost too much - to remember how she drew herself up to her full height and, her gentle voice turning into a hysterical shriek, spat at the ghoulish creatures that swarmed around Mel,  
  
'YOU SHALL NOT HAVE HIM!'  
  
Of course, a vampire would say that... She probably wanted to claim Mel all for herself, to feast on his blood with no-one to grovel for a share. It is most strange that she never did that - she certainly got plenty of opportunity.  
  
Her furious scream was accompanied by the charge of a spell - nothing like the Templar powers she had been using so far. It was dark, unholy magic: tendrils of red smoke... no, not just red, deep, dark red, blending into black in places, slithering out of her grasp like what Athraedal had tried and failed to conjure. Fast and unstoppable like blood spurting out of a mortal wound, the ghostly red coils spread among the undead - including Faenir, who had also apparently been slightly startled by Lavinia's sudden outburst - and then, wrapped themselves around their pale throats like silken ribbons, tightening their noose with every second, and slid inside their mouths and ears, making them fall back and writhe in agony, trying to swat the smoke off their faces but only peeling off their own skin instead.  
  
Tangled in their constricting magical bindings, the vampires and the zombies grew vulnerable to the precise, merciless strikes of Lavinia's glowing conjured lance - and somehow, in the reflected light of the dark magic, the noble weapon of a Templar also acquired a reddish glow, as if the golden spear had been splattered with blood.  
  
Faenir was among the first vampires that Lavinia disposed of, piercing the fiend through the heart and making a crimson shade, like the ones that heralded the demise of both Athraedal and Lathriel, separate itself from its body and then melt into nothingness. No longer trapped in a giant ball woven out of rotting limbs, Mel could observe the last moments of his quarry's unlife unobstructed - but no joy stirred within him at the thought that the evil being he had chased for so long would threaten nobody else, in all of Tamriel. He was still racked by pain, and could not even bring himself to swing his sword properly, to cut down the last stragglers from Faenir's brood... Not that he needed to, anyway - Lavinia's Templar lance did its job perfectly well, even though its honourable purpose had been stolen by a creature of the night.  
  
Before long, only Mel and Lavinia remained in the cavern, facing each other amid ash and corpses, with their weapons lowered and an oppressive silence hanging over their bowed-down heads. The wild flame in the Altmer's eyes had simmered down, but the symptoms of vampirism, once exposed by her battle fury, now remained tragically obvious: her cheeks had been sucked in, her sharp cheekbones protruding almost beyond the outlines of her face, and her eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets, which were now encircled by purple bruises, with tiny dark veins branching out from them. She must have read the shock in Mel's eyes, for she hid her haggard visage beneath her trembling fingers, and whispered, her voice shy and tremulous once more,  
  
'I... I am so sorry you had to see this... I still have a long way to go... to fully control my anger... I just... I couldn't let them hurt you...'  
  
At least, Mel thinks she mumbled something along these lines - he could not properly register what she was saying, his whole mind occupied by a single devastating thought.  
  
'You are one of them,' he said hoarsely, staggering away from Lavinia and groping for his sword. 'One of... them!'  
  
'No!' she started and lowered her hand, arching her eyebrows like a frightened child. 'No! I would never fall in with the likes of Faenir! I would never... claim an innocent! My... condition is a great burden to bear - but I still strive to do good!'  
  
'There! Is! No! Such! Thing! As! A! Good! Vampire!' Mel choked, trying to make his voice sound as loud and livid as possible, to drown out what, to his dread, he thought to be an echo of tears.   
  
She looked at him in a prolonged silence, as he tried to lift his (suddenly strangely unwieldy) weapon and brandish it at her, and then said, in a tone that seemed slightly mournful but mostly was icy cold,  
  
'And yet... I helped you make it through this cavern, and rescued you every time your enemies overpowered you. My intentions were sincere; my hurt, when I saw you down and feared you might not get up again, was sincere... You sensed it yourself, I think, when I healed you; you believed me to be your friend - and yet, suddenly, now that you know my nature, I am your friend no longer? Suddenly, I am denied your faith, your companionship, because of what I am?'   
  
A small, wry smile touched her lips, as she steepled her fingers together against her chest, and closed her eyes (as it turned out moments later, she was concentrating on a spell).  
  
'Oh dear Mel... If only you spent less time alone... If only you tried to get to know people... You'd see that none are purely good or purely bad. They are... Like seashells, with a pearl inside. Sometimes the pearl is bigger, sometimes it's smaller - but it is always there. It must have been there in Faenir, though perhaps so long ago that he himself forgot about it, and chose to give in to darkness - and it was certainly there in that sweet Bosmer we met at the entrance, and all the other bloodkin that stood up against the skull scheme. It is there in you - though I am afraid you are losing your grip on it'.  
  
'Stop... Stop wagging your poisoned tongue, you blood-sucking n'wah!' Mel panted, finally getting a grip of his sword and taking a warning swipe at the Altmer.  
  
'I will stop,' she reassured him, sounding warmer this time - which somehow drove Mel to lower his blade. 'I will leave you be for now - but I hope not forever. Because it still pains me to see what loneliness has done to you - to such a strong, driven mer, such a capable warrior... such a wonderful companion to share an adventure with. Goodbye, Mel. Please, please stop reading that book'.  
  
Hardly had she spoken when her spellcasting reached its completion, and billows of black smoke fell over her like some tainted version of a bridal veil. When the veil faded away, a few moments later, Lavinia was nowhere to be seen. Mel was on his own now, standing completely still, with no sound breaking the encroaching silence save for the feverish beating of his own heart.  
  
Dear gods, in all his life, being alone had never hurt so much.


	6. Chapter 6

Alone, Mel left Faenir's 'throne room' and trudged off along yet another tunnel, with his head bowed down and the confident spring completely gone from his stride. Alone, he entered the cavern's most vast section yet, with a blood-splattered altar in its centre. Alone, he stood in front of that altar, shielding his eyes from the red glare that cloaked the time-worn, darkened skull that had been placed on the stone - by that Veiled One, no doubt, whoever he was and wherever he went now.  
  
The skull was not the only source of the red light: the three shades were there again, suspended in mid-air above the altar - the hazy, see-through figures that were just vaguely recognizable as Athraedal, Lathriel, and Faenir. And this time, they remained in place, no matter how long Mel looked at them with his tired eyes, or how many times he blinked, to try and get rid of that blasted burning feeling underneath his eyelids. They did not vanish, tethered by flaring beams of even more red light, which linked them to the skull. Mechanically, not out of any particular interest towards the creatures' fate, but rather out of an old tracker's habit to analyze and draw conclusions from everything he saw, Mel noted to himself that, in order to power up this sinister relic, the three leaders of the vampire coven must have sacrificed what little remained of their souls... And judging by the way the shades thrashed in their burning bindings, trying and failing to break free of their trap, the procedure must have been very painful.  
  
Lavinia would have felt sorry for them, Mel thought suddenly, some of his painful bitterness inexplicably subsiding. Lavinia would have tried to reach up, her delicate white fingers effortlessly gliding a couple of inches inside the ghostly figures' forearms as if she had plunged them into blood-infused water, and made a small stroking motion, even though she would have probably been aware that it would do nothing to soothe the shades' suffering. She would have given them that little smile of hers, like when she healed the charred tree branches and cleansed the venom from Mel's body, and reassured them that their torment would soon be over, and, with the skull destroyed, they would be able to pass on to Aetherius. But Lavinia had vanished without a trace; there was no-one here now to be foolish enough to waste sympathy and compassion on the ensnared remnants of bloodthirsty fiends. Or was there? This lone old hunter had already disgraced himself in more ways that he could count - what harm could there be in one more?  
  
Lifting himself up on tiptoe, Mel brushed his steel-clad hand along the outline of his vanquished nemesis' shoulder. He was not certain if Faenir had sensed it - if the wretch was even capable of sensing anything at this point - but as Mel recollects his little gesture, with an exceedingly poignant mixed pang of shame and sadness, it seems to him that the distorted, silently screaming mask, which had once been the face of his enemy, grew less twisted and lined as his fingers passed through into the wraith's fleshless body.  
  
After giving this awkward farewell pat to the creature he had so long hunted (or, to echo that... silly metaphor of Lavinia's, a man who had fallen prey to his own dark anger, forgetting about the pearl of light inside his heart), Mel raised his flaming blade over the cursed vampire skull, and repeated the words that he was so fond of uttering whenever he confronted the wicked spawn of darkness. Only this time, instead of ringing out in a fearsome battle cry, the words came out soft and sincere, like a farewell promise.  
  
'You shall be purified'.  
  
He wondered then, as he wonders now, how Lavinia would have reacted to that. Would she have smiled at him; would that have made her face light up again, making the horrifying symptoms of vampirism subside? Would she have thanked him for not doing things by the book? Bah, it is pointless to bother with these questions now. He will never be able to answer them - nor should he be interested in answers! Really, what kind of a vampire turns into an eager nix pup at the thought of gaining a blood fiend's approval?   
  
What is done is done now. Lavinia wasn't by his side when he finished his mission. He was alone.  
  
Alone, he brought down his blade, cracking the skull so that it appeared to bleed black smoke out of the gashes in the fractured bone. Alone, he lifted his weapon again, a second and a third and a dozenth time, suddenly finding himself sucked into the flow of a ferocious rhythm, akin to that of his march that had led him here, into the shade of the old graht oak.  
  
Alone, completely alone, worn out and furious and broken on the inside, he kept hammering at the cursed altar till nothing remained of the skull but a grainy mound of bonemeal. Alone, he watched the three red shades break loose, with no more blinding beams to tie them down, and float towards the ceiling, gradually fading along the way, until the point when they fully dissolved, with what sounded like a sigh of relief. Alone, he left the cave behind him and made his way through the moors, barely noticing how all around him, the pall of fog kept growing thinner, and the golden sunlight was beginning to break through it, making the shimmering water and the last, light tufts of mist look like the warm aura of Lavinia's healing magic.  
  
Alone, he retraced his steps to the village of Longhaven, to inform the local Wood Elves that the vampires were gone. And alone, he had to wordlessly suffer through their gushing praise and impromptu songs, as they grabbed him and stuffed him inside the nearest tree pod home, welcoming him to rest while they prepared a feast in honour of his heroic victory (in a tone that suggested that they would not take no for an answer - nor could he be bothered to stir enough emotion in himself to brush them off).  
  
'We will even cook some bugs, the way you Dunmer like!' someone announced excitedly, bouncing somewhere at the level of Mel's waist, while he shuffled across the floor of the modest Bosmeri dwelling, eventually sinking heavily onto a narrow cot crafted out of bone and beast pelts, with a look on his face that made his gregarious hosts fear that he had been wounded.   
  
And there were, in fact, some untreated tears in his flesh, where the undead had clawed at him. Still silent and despondent, Mel allowed the venerable Bosmeri alchemist to help him strip down to the waist and then take a look at his wounds. He sat on the cot like a dumb, voiceless figure of clay, with his shoulders hunched and with his eyes barely focusing on the movement of the alchemist's small, nimble hands, as in the place of her swarthy, wrinkled face, he imagined that of another woman, another healer, another kind soul that wanted to make sure his body was fully mended. And while his mind wandered off, the unseen shards in his chest sank deep into his flesh once more, inflicting the sort of pain that no potion could cure.  
  
The healer left him be for a few moments, called away by a younger Bosmer who poked her head into the pod and said that 'that stranger's asking around about the Wild Witch!'. Those words sent an electrifying jolt through Mel's body, making him straighten up and furrow his forehead. The girl said, 'that stranger' - 'that stranger'... This implied that it was a person who had been to Longhaven before, but was not part of the local community. Mel knew two people who matched that description: one was he himself, and the other...  
  
The force with which he leapt to his feet almost made the entire Wood Elven home collapse around him. Dear gods, he remembers screaming silently, his heart soaring till it almost became trapped inside his throat. Dear gods! This... This had to be her! She had come back - she had returned to Longhaven... To investigate some... Wild Witch? That sounded like the beginning of another expedition. A foray against that Veiled Heritance she kept talking about? Maybe she needed help... Maybe she deserved another chance? Maybe he could..?  
  
'No!' he spat in rage, sitting decisively back down.  
  
'No!' he hisses through his teeth, repeating what he said back then.  
  
'No! She is a vampire! A tame one, one that thinks it can be different - but a vampire nonetheless! The only thing that you can do is rip her black heart out in front of the whole village, so that they see what a foul viper she really is... Oh, but you won't be able to do that, will you? You will tell yourself some nonsense about how the creature saved Longhaven as much as you did, and that for now, it deserves to be spared... Well then, if you are going to let the vampire escape either way, stay put and don't make a fool of yourself!'  
  
He would probably have ordered himself to intervene if the alchemist did not return for long, as he would have surely begun to fear that she had been attacked. But thankfully, the woman entered the tree pod again before Mel could continue debating with himself, appearing to be hale and hearty and unbitten by any creatures of the night. Perhaps 'that stranger' wasn't even Lavinia: Longhaven was not exactly Elden Root, but it was not in the middle of nowhere either! There had to be some merchants and other travellers passing through it now and again - on their way to Marbruk or to the Bandaari Trading Post, for example. Plenty of strangers to choose from.  
  
Soon afterwards, the alchemist declared that she was done, stepping away from Mel, who nodded to her vaguely in thanks and started fumbling about for his shirt and cuirass. Hardly had he gotten dressed again when a bunch of Bosmeri celebrants burst in, declaring that the feast was ready.  
  
This was not the first time when the people he had saved from vampires offered him to share their company at the dinner table (or in this case, at the fireside in the centre of the village). He usually tends to refuse - because lighthearted revelry often gives rise to friendships, and he avoids those like the plague. But in this case, Mel made an exception - and not only because his general listlessness left him with no strength to refuse. He also found himself musing, somewhere at the back of his head, if being surrounded by all these happy faces, faces of people that praised him and admired him and genuinely wished for him to stay... if it would make him feel less alone?  
  
It turns out that it didn't. It turns out that no amount of crispy giant beetle legs and plump maggots leaped on the plate in front of him, no friendly suggestions to try some of that odd meaty substance the Bosmer use instead of wine or beer, no vivacious handshakes from the rugged hunters with ceremonial scars and no bashful smiles from the village girls and boys could induce Mel's mind, which seemed to have somehow left his body, to return back to its rightful place and to fully, properly experience what was going on around him, eagerly absorbing every sound, every taste,  every smell, and every texture. He exerted himself almost to the point of screaming in frustration, commanding himself to make merry, to immerse himself in the joy of the feast - but he still remained a mere observer, hovering, like those trapped red shades, next to an enormous burning brazier, which was surrounded by grinning, sharp-toothed Bosmer, with a silent, gloomy Dunmer in their midst.  
  
It was an odd, eerie feeling (perhaps a side effect of that banished mist?) - looking upon his own clay-like husk with the eyes of an outsider. Mel had experienced something of this nature a few times before, when he was younger, still learning how to master mind games with the creatures of the night. He can remember how his quarry would taunt him, with a mocking leer on its bloodied lips, about what a lost little weakling he was, with no ties to friends or family, and how, at the sound of those cruel words, the world would suddenly seem to freeze up and lose colour, while he himself felt so very, very empty... But never before had this sense of detachment been so all-consuming. Mel does not dare surmise what it might have done to his mind, if he hadn't snapped back to reality.  
  
There was one Bosmer among the revellers that did not seem to care about the feast any more than Mel did. Eventually, the Dunmer focused his attention on him, snatching his angular, unshaven face out of the happy blur that surrounded them. The mer looked like he had not slept for several nights, and his eyes were widened and glassy, rather like those of a forest beast that had been caught in the metal jaws of a trap and had grown so weary of struggling and screeching with pain that it did not care about its own fate any longer. Mel knew that look - and he could hazard a very good guess that the Bosmer was seeing the same thing in his own eyes when their gazes met.  
  
He was just beginning to fumble through his mind, trying to recollect what it was people said to someone who had obviously gone through some sort of agonizing ordeal, when there was a short, ecstatic cry, and a woman's voice called out, words barely distinguishable due to a mixture of utter joy and a thick Bosmeri accent,  
  
'I am back! By Y'Ffre, I am back! I don't feel cold any more!'  
  
The anguished Bosmer stirred, an incredulous smile spreading across his face as he lifted his head and slowly turned to face the new arrival - a female kinsmer of his, with long dark-brown hair and a layer of fresh mud caking over her clothes and body almost up to the neck, indicating that she had raced here from the moors.  
  
'Elsenia?' he breathed, staggering to his feet, while all the other villagers looked on in dumbfounded silence. 'I... I thought I'd lost you!'  
  
'I was almost lost,' she explained breathlessly, walking up to the male mer and taking his hands in hers. 'The creatures from the mist... They bit me, and said that in three days' time, I would join them. I hid in the marsh, terrified and hating myself, until a kind soul found the Wild Witch for me, and got me a potion that cured me before I got... turned. Y'Ffre's bones, I didn't even know the Wild Witch existed!'  
  
'You were in the marsh this whole time?' he asked, freeing one hand to stroke her face. 'I...' his voice quivered uncontrollably and he had to pause for breath before he could speak again, slightly clutching at a strand of his mate's hair as if it was an anchor chain that kept him grounded. 'I called for you! I walked through the mud till I collapsed, and I called for you every few minutes! Didn't you hear me? Why didn't you answer?'  
  
'I...' she tilted her head, evading the gentle touch of his fingers, when he let go of her hair and attempted to caress her skin again. 'I didn't want you to see me... turn into a monster'.  
  
'I know you, Elsenia,' the male Bosmer mouthed, as he drew closer to her and passed his hand along the back of her neck, making her look into his eyes again. 'I know that you would never have turned into a monster - even if you did become... one of them'.  
  
'How can you be so sure?' she whispered bitterly, leaning forward and bumping her forehead slightly against his. 'That woman... The one who brought me the potion... She said that once you turn into a vampire, people start hating you... Even those who otherwise might have... might have cared for you...'  
  
'Not me,' Elsenia's mate objected, as he gazed into her eyes and slowly wove his arms around her. 'Never me. I love you. And I always will'.  
  
He sealed his reassurance with a long, passionate kiss, which was met with a round of applause and cheering hoots from the feasting Bosmer. It was then that Mel excused himself in a hoarse whisper and slipped away, clutching as his chest - for the detached numbness had been replaced with shattering pain again.


	7. Chapter 7

For some time now, the wet curtain beyond the shelter of the graht roots has been growing thinner and thinner - and finally, there comes a moment when the rain stops completely, leaving behind a dense, hot cloud of heady herbal fragrance, as the gigantic plants slowly straighten their bowing stalks and open their buds, pearly drops of water rolling down their glossy, ornate leaves and springy flower petals.  
  
Biting into his lips in concentration, the lone Dunmer wanderer commands himself to 'get up and keep moving and leave all of this behind, you sappy old s'wit!', and then begins collecting and putting on his scattered armour pieces. The swift, precise motions, along with the familiar, and quite welcome, sensation of protective steel encasing his body, calm him down, resurrecting some of his former determination. Even despite all that happened, there is a good chance of him becoming... normal again; and the thought makes Mel nod assuredly to himself.  
  
When fully equipped, he hoists his sword on his back and, ducking below the massive, arching tree roots, steps back on the slippery forest soil.  
  
So it begins. Another adventure that will never be known to the world, because the adventurer never bothered to make friends with a storyteller. Another solitary journey through the wilds of Tamriel, in search of fell beasts to slay. He was tested, he was tempted, he was betrayed - but he is free now. After mulling over his conflicting memories for so long, he feels like he, at least for the time being, has broken out of the snare that closed in round him, distracting him from doing what must be done; he has meditated on his mistakes and tried his best to push the memories of them into the very back of his mind; and he has, once again, embraced his solemn loneliness. He is ready to return to the path he abandoned - both literally and figuratively.  
  
He thinks he might head north - there have been rumours of shadows flitting through the forest, of undead rising around old Bosmeri funeral sites, of wildlife being tainted by unnatural magic... Some even say that it is the Aldmeri queen's late brother who is behind this, raised as a leech to oppose his sister and her Dominion; whether or not that is true, there will be plenty of work for someone like Mel. Someone who, time after time after time, arrives at yet another hapless, besieged settlement, clears its streets of the walking dead and then walks off into the night, almost always on his own (save for an occasional temporary companion, who never means, or should mean, anything to him). Never stopping, never settling, never allowing himself to become disoriented by the gleeful smiles of the people he'd helped. It is as it should be.  
  
This solemn mental monologue, along with long draughts of the richly scented after-rain air, invigorates Mel, and he covers quite a lot of ground in a relatively short while. His strength flooding back into him with every step of the way (every step that, as he is pleased to remark, increases the distance between him and the wretched Longhaven moors), Mel feels like he would have kept walking at this pace for quite some time - if his trek has not been interrupted by the oddest of sounds, coming somewhere from high above - like the badly greased gears of some gigantic mechanism, clicking and grinding against one another with a monotonous screech, against the background of a low, throbbing hum.   
  
For a moment, a crazy thought flashes through Mel's mind: might all of these mechanic noises mean that his recent recklessness has angered the Tribunal somehow, and Sotha Sil himself is coming to punish him? Although... The master of the Clockwork city would hardly be interested in vampire hunters, would he? No, if anything, that would be more in Lady Almalexia's domain... Probably. Unless they are all ganging up on him together, and Sotha Sil is just being... the most audible? No, now he is straying way too far into paranoia territory. But all the same, it will not hurt to check where the clicking is coming from; a sound like this, like the movement of some Dwemer automaton's joints, does not belong in the heart of a wild Bosmeri jungle, which Mel has seen literally fighting tooth and claw against any inklings of civilization.  Whatever is making all this noise, it does not bode well.  
  
Pausing in his tracks, the Dunmer warrior lifts his head and glances around from underneath the shield of his hand. It does not take him too long to spot the source of the clicking - and b'wek, it sure is nowhere near what a manifestation of Sotha Sil might have looked like.   
  
Suspended in the sky, high over the tree tops, is a monstrously huge metallic ring, adorned with spikes like the collar of a war hound. The ring serves as a frame for a bright-blue glowing circle, with a dizzying whirlpool of crisp, icy light swirling in its middle. Through the ever-shifting coils of light, Men can make out glimpses of what seems to be a patch of sky - a different sky, dark and cold and devoid of the sun or stars or moons. Gods preserve him... Is this... Is this some sort of portal to one of the planes of Oblivion? If so, he needs to get closer - he needs to figure out a way to close this thing!  There are enough monsters stalking the people of this land without the despicable Daedric trickery adding up to the mix!  
  
Thankfully, Mel is given a more or less definite notion of where to run: with an even louder, almost deafening, metallic screech, three heavy black chains roll out from beneath the circle's spikes, lashing at the grant trees and making some of them splinter like broken match sticks. Then, as the lower ends of the chains disappear from view in the depths of the jungle, they seem to grow terser, as if they have caught against something down below and this something is now holding them in place. If Mel finds that something, he might figure out a way to make that bloody window into Oblivion close itself - and maybe how to deal with whoever tainted the Valenwood sky with the thing in the first place. Maybe, like the curse of the vampire skull (gods, that sounds like the title of a cheesy adventure novel), the portal is yet more trickery of that Veiled person and his Heritance? Lavinia said... No, dammit, he thought he made a resolution to banish all thoughts of the creature from his mind!  
  
Gritting his teeth and filling his lungs with a resolute intake of air, Mel breaks into a run, straying from the road (again! But for a good cause this time) and plunging head-first into the wet greenery of the wild forest, with his narrowed eyes focused on the tree chains, which are still visible through the gaps between the tree trunks, appearing to race joltingly along with Mel, while the portal they are linked to keeps swelling in size (due to either the shortening distance or the strengthening Daedric magic... or maybe an equal share of both), threatening to swallow up the whole sky.  
  
As Mel draws nearer to the place where the chains must have landed, the air around him grows noticeably colder, and the colours of the jungle plants, which occasionally slap at his face with their broad flat leaves, somehow become less vibrant, steadily shifting from deep, lush shades of green to a dull, faded grey. Mel even slows down a little, wondering if the blurred effect of his own hasty motion is playing tricks on him. No, the bizarre colour change is definitely there: the woodland clearing that the running Dunmer has stumbled into looks if all life has been sucked out of it - out of every tree, every fern and every shrub... As if nature herself has been... bitten by a vampire.  
  
To add to this rather unnerving image, there are large white flakes drifting from the icy heavens, covering the drooping grey plants with a fine powdery film. Mel has heard of snow, of course, and even saw it on occasion, during his travels across the Rift in Skyrim; but his first thought, when one of the flakes brushes against his cheek, is of something that is far more familiar to a Dunmer: cold ash. Seeing either one in the supposedly warm and verdant Valenwood, with not a lava stream in sight, is far from a good sign.  
  
Gaping around as he does, Mel almost leaves an irreparable dent in his armour as he rams his... rear section straight into some sort of well-like construct, carved out of smooth, dark-grey stone. Whirling around, Mel sees the chains, all coming together inside the well, so close that he can almost touch them. There is a wave of pulsing energy emanating from them, resonating deep inside Mel's chest and making his heart contract and jolt abruptly, as if recoiling from an unseen spear of ice.   
  
Swallowing a lump in his throat, Mel steps back and draws his blade. Steady now, he tells himself. Steady now. This kind of magic may be unfamiliar - but one thing is clear: it is evil. And his one purpose is to seek out evil, and to take battle to it. At all times - even when, like now, he is standing face to face with something huge and unknown and perhaps vastly beyond his capabilities... when he is standing all by himself. Alone.  
  
Steady now, he repeats in his mind, biting into his lips. Being alone is not an obstacle. It never has been, and never will be. He can close this... thing - and he does not need anyone to aid him. Maybe there is some way these chains can be severed...  
  
Mel is ready to find an answer to this question by the age-old, attested method of trial and error (in other words, by hacking at the chains with his blade till he manages to break... something). But he does not get a chance to do so, as the ground underneath his feet is shaken by a tremendous thundering rumble, which knocks him off-balance, making him land quite painfully on his back (and again, almost dent his armour in that embarrassing spot). For a few moments, Mel remains in this awkwardly prostrate pose, sword still in hand, blinking at the burning blue vortex overhead and straining to make out whether there are muffled voices chanting something, on the other side of the well, or that is just the ringing in his ears. Before long, he feels that the ash-strewn (or maybe snowy... whatever the substance is, its flaky and cold to the touch and does not melt away) forest floor has begun to heave in another rumble - which is promptly followed by a splash of sizzling light, bursting out of the portal like a shooting star. On its way down, it passes quite close to Mel, allowing him to discern that the 'star' is actually some sort of disfigured creature, cloaked in blue flame and plummeting towards the ground the way a cliff racer swoops in to attack it prey. Dammit all - the vortex is spitting out Daedra!  
  
Pushing himself to his feet and shielding his upper body from any encroaching danger with his bared enchanted blade, Mel backs away, to get a clearer view of what is going on around the stone well. While he does so, the portal already manages to belch a few more jets of flame, a scaly beast of every possible shape and size travelling downwards inside of each.   
  
As their clawed paws sink into the ashen blanket that has enveloped the ground, the fiendish spawn of the Daedric portal slowly turn their ugly heads to glance around. Some of them have elongated, crocodile-like snouts, with long sharp teeth peeking out of the black slits of their mouths like yellowish-white tassel; while others have strong, hard bird beaks, or completely flat faces that look like lumps of dough squashed in by the thrust of a heavy fist - but all are equally revolting to look at, and all share the same feature: inky, ravenously glinting eyes, which dart to and fro around the clearing, with a single intent burning within them, one that Mel is perfectly familiar with. The desire to seek out a creature of mortal flesh, and then rip it apart and gorge greedily on its blood. Well, today this hunger of theirs will go undated.   
  
Invoking the names of the Dunmeri saints so his hand be steady and his strikes be true, Mel charges forward, succeeding in felling a reptilian beast (Clannfears, he thinks they are called) at the very first blow. Leaving the creature to writhe on the ground, unable to get up or to extinguish the magical flames that leapt onto its scales the moment the blade ripped into its body, Mel approaches a group of other, smaller Daedra, which look like the malformed and exceptionally toothy love children of some shrivelled up old Dremora and a drunken goblin. These also prove fairly easy to dispose of - although the sheer size of their squirming, hissing pack, which swarms around Mel in a rapid, wild dance, makes them somewhat exasperating to deal with, especially since the nasty little critters are capable of casting primitive, but rather painfully stinging, lightning spells. As the Dunmer leaps to the side, dodging one of the beastlings' shock blasts, he gets a broader view of what is going on elsewhere around the stone well - just in time to witness everything erupt into chaos.  
  
As the otherworldly sky beyond the portal boils into a raging storm, the Daedric construct continues to spit out more and more unseemly creatures - while the ground shakes again, but this time not with the noise of the grinding machinery. No, now the rumble is made by countless armoured boots and horse hooves, advancing from the forest thicket like a rising tidal wave, till the clearing suddenly gets flooded by a crowd of armed men and women of almost every race and stature, most of them clad in what Mel recognizes as the Fighters' Guild uniform. With a succession of roaring Nordic battle cries, angry Khajiiti hisses, and good old rasping Dunmeri curses, the cohort of warriors clashes against the Daedric fiends. The clearing erupts into deafening metallic clamour, punctuated now and again by the creatures' shrieks of agony; for a couple of seconds, Mel feels slightly dazed - but he does not allow himself to stagger around when there is so much fighting to be done. Hurriedly tossing the remaining goblinoid critters out of his path, he joins the fray, the heat of the battle fury slowly spreading through his veins like the first tingling glow of wine.  
  
Soon enough, he is swept away by this wild wave, allowing it to carry him around the clearing in an endless spinning circle - like the motion inside the portal - and feeding his sword on whichever Daedric monstrosity the flow of the fight brings him to. More often than not, he arrives just in time to render aid to a fellow warrior - piercing a lumbering ogrim through its wobbly belly just as it is about to crush a stunned-looking young Imperial who seems to have lost his grip on his blade for a moment; or chasing off another clannfear that has just knocked over a featherweight Bosmer fighter with a swat of its tail; or taunting a snarling Dremora so that an Altmeri battlemage gets a change to cautiously approach to the distracted creature, just close enough purge it with a disintegrating charge of conjured flame. And every time, upon ensuring that the fighter has done his or her job, Mel races off again, seeking out a new target to destroy, never to cross paths with this particular man or woman again.  
  
It does at times seem to him, as he glances back out of the corner of his eye, that the warrior he's helped is reaching out after him, maybe even mouthing something...   
  
Thanking him? Asking him what his name is? Inviting him to stay and fight by their side?  
  
It doesn't matter. He fights alone.  
  
  
The portal is tireless, producing more spawn than a well-bred kwama queen. At one point, it sets loose an especially nightmarish creature - a bloodcurdling mix between some of the more exaggeratedly monstrous depictions of Mephala and Boethiah that Mel has gotten a chance to see. Pushing itself up on its thick serpent's tail, the Daedra rises high above the battlefield, spreading the shoulders of its scaly female torso and raising its many arms into the air, in preparation for a predatory pounce. Lunging at the crowd of warriors below, it snatches out one of them and slowly lifts the struggling mortal to its leering serpent-like face. The victim of the Daedra stands out against their captor's dark-purple scaly hide and the surrounding dreary greyness - like a bright splash of pure white colour, unsullied even after... even after all this fighting... The robe that the poor wretch is wearing has to be enchanted - and there are not that many people traversing the Valenwood in garments like these.  
  
Barely feeling the ground beneath his feet, Mel shifts closer to the creature, his glassy gaze following its prey's fruitless attempts to break free. Oh sweet merciful Almalexia - it is her... It really is her! It's Lavinia - he can see that plainly now: the familiar bony white arms, thrashing against the mighty limbs of the serpentine Daedra; the angular face, twisting in pain when the creature's claws rip at her; the blood-red eyes, widening in desperation, just the way they widened when she saw Mel advancing at her with his blade bared.  
  
Lavinia... She - she has come here, among all these Fighters Guild members; perhaps even led them here... seeking to banish the Daedric horde unleashed upon the land... striving... striving to do good. Only to find herself dealing with an enemy that cannot be defeated if you fight it alone.  
  
Just as Mel has come to terms with the despondent thought that there is nothing left within his chest to break, the shattering feeling mangles his heart again.


End file.
